The Wheel
by AEsob
Summary: The Wheel rotates, and those at the top now find themselves gradually placed below the feet of the ones they once trampled. The ones who shaped history were shaped by history. The pawns cast by the movers and shakers of this new age die fighting as black wings break free of the aeons of torture. The time of Chaos has come, and all shall be swallowed whole.


Skyrim

Somewhere in Haafingar

4E 201

"Horde"

* * *

" _Harr-Harr-Harr"_

" _Harr-Harr-Harr"_

"Praise be to mother Kyne!"

Six thousand Nordic warriors raised their axes and bellowed. Their cries shattering the sky.

" _Hoorh-Hoorh-Hoorh"_

"Today, we raise our axes in your honour oh goddess of the wind! Carry us oh ghost-of-tide, carry us to Sovngarde, or let us wet your winds with the blood of our enemies!"

Both the immense guttural voices of men and the shriller yet deadlier voices of women filled the sky with roars of approval.

Amongst the furious thumping of three thousand shields, the flash of a thousand spearheads and the dying light gleaming weakly against the rows of raised axes assembled, and crinkling of the chainmail and the rearing of the horses ready for the charge, a grown man with a head full of brilliant red hair with streaks of grey raised his face skyward and inhaled.

"Cavalry, ready positions! Infantry! Archers! Prepare the boar snout and hold your ground! "

The scars on his face were many, yet his hair and beard were braided as befit a nobleman.

In some ways, this heavily armoured man who hid chainmail under his long, padded coat and cloak, and a set of plate mail underneath that was a nobleman.

He was Ulf Bloody Beard, mercenary king.

As he slipped on his helm and adjusted the nasal, he laughed inwardly at the image he had just made. All that talk of Kyne was just for show, a game of pretend he played with his god-fearing soldiers.

Apparently, when all you have are three forts and five villages and you kill people for money, all that talk of the Old Gods helps morale.

He picked up his shield and swung his axe once, to check the balance. It was a good idea, he decided, to have the wooden shaft reinforced with steel.

"Jorgen! Toss me a spear, one of the longer ones."

He shifted on his left foot to catch the spear flung at him, and winced inwardly. He was not supposed to put too much pressure on that leg, he knew, especially since Seax wounds took long to heal at his rather 'advanced age'.

He sighed. There was no escaping it. At his forty sixth winter soon approaching, he was, to be put bluntly, getting old.

One of these battles, he knew, was going to kill him.

With a seax secured to the back of his belt, hidden under his cloak, his axe on a loop on his belt and a spear in his hand.

With his shield raised to protect himself from arrows, and axe drenched in the blood of his foes.

Ulf decided that as ways to die go, this wasn't that bad.

And he wasn't sure that he was going to die.

The enemies they were up against were a group of bandits and mercenaries about a thousand strong. With no cavalry and few archers, and no mages, the initial shield walls would collapse under the feet of his one thousand five hundred horses while his infantry would breathe easy with no sudden death approaching from the skies.

The bandits, he knew, would drop like flies, but the mercenaries were always a little tricky.

Mercenaries were never unitary in skill or experience, some were veterans of old wars, others were boys from some village with a blade, a shield, a gambeson and dreams.

He wondered if six thousand elite troops were overkill for a bandit army, but then again, he wasn't paid to defeat the insurrection, he was paid to crush it.

And the problem was that he didn't have a partisan illusion about the state of things, he knew full well what he was going to do. That was where he envied the Imperials and Stormcloaks, those blind fools who believed that they did good work defeating the evil that encroached on their traditions/murdered their king. At least, with those delusions they slept a little better at night. He didn't have that luxury. The weight of the lives they took fell heavily on him and his soldiers, and so, between battles they drank taverns empty and fucked their way across brothels all across Skyrim.

He decided not to mull over things, and to get back at the task at hand.

Which was to kill more people, which would make the mulling come back later, only more intense, with the blood still fresh on his hands.

Funny, very funny.

He made up his mind that when he would retire he would write and publish a book full of such anecdotes. Maybe that would sell well, and people would take their mind off murder and then turn once again, back to murder, but only in printed form.

And he wondered why bodice-rippers sold so well...

He laughed like a madman, his wrinkled and scarred face overtaken by mirth.

Jorgen frowned, the Captain had gone mad in his old age. The decision to bring one fourth of the troops was reason enough to suspect madness, and now stereotypical mad laughter

Ulf shook his head still laughing, and took decided steps towards his mount.

He would lead the cavalry.

"Roderick! Is she ready to go?"

"Aye, sir!"

"Good lad!" Ulf tossed two septims towards the boy and mounted his mare.

He didn't know if this was the end or if it was just another day in hell but he knew that he had to stick with his lot in life.

The time to explore and win the world was over.

And yet, a time existed long, long ago when he would give anything for a new experience, when he lived life on the edge.

And it got him...right fucking here.

Suddenly Ulf found his mare snorting to wake him from his daydream, and it really wasn't the time to daydream.

He had a charge to lead, another insurrection to crush.

He trotted to the front of his assembled troops, and weapons rose to acknowledge their leader, the one, who instead of hiding behind a map was ready to lead them, be it to victory or Sovngarde.

"Cavalry..." he drew in a deep breath, and then bellowed: "CHAAAAAARGE!"

The line rumbled, snorted and huffed.

Stallions reared, warriors kicked their horses with spike heeled boots.

He knew this part was coming, but he never wanted to do it.

To kick a dumb creature in the stomach with a spike to drive it towards the very spear she tried with all her might to run away from.

He did it anyway. Fortunately with a battle hardened mount it was more of a jab than a stab.

His mare neighed, reared and then kicked forward, her rider's chainmail clicking in contact with the plate armour below.

And then it began.

The ground quaked as one thousand five hundred horses with warriors seated atop pounded the uneven ground to dust.

Under Kynareth's sky, with Magnus abandoning the mortals in their sports of bloodletting, and hiding behind the clouds shameful of his creation, and ravens, like the dogs of war cracking Nirn below the hooves of their horses, soared above, preparing for a brand new meal of warm entrails.

Ulf and his men shook the earth, the riders trying their best to keep their beating hearts masked under the thunderous rumbling of fifteen hundred horses madly trampling anything in their way.

The insurgents were almost prepared. They knew they were in the open and it was hopeless to run. Most had no idea what heavy cavalry could do to them, and so they raised their shields, prepared their spears, young fresh faced men and women, ready to face danger, unaware of what was truly headed their way. The immense, shining line that shook the earth and kicked up a dust cloud of death was visible now.

The horses were far more nervous than the murderers seated above, for their primal instinct rose within them.

"What are you doing you fool," it said to them, "run away from the danger, the unknown that is before you, the ones with the pointy things that hurt worse than the riders' jabs."

Yet they ran, for it was all they could do. The herd always stayed together. In rain, in snow, in the dust the metal hooves made, and the tides of blood the horde made.

Their eyes went wide, their ears pricked towards the grunting and the praying line of various coloured blue things before them.

For the riders seated atop, the world slowed down, till there was only a spear, a gap in the wall where an eye was visible, and a single moment.

Ulf stabbed, and the point of his spear tore through the air in that gap, and before the gap closed, through a skull that cracked around steel and through it, into the heart behind the unevenly gambeson whose dying beats reverberated through the wood and into his hand.

In that split second, with his brain throbbing inside his skull, he noticed a curving arrow coming at his gauntleted arm.

He sharply drew it into his chest, and the arrow flew safely over him, and helpfully, not into a rider behind him, but the ground below. But the wooden spear in his hand splintered into the wounds of the impaled, as he had jerked with far too much force.

And then he heard the screams. One male, the other female.

His hands had taken many lives, two more were but a minor addition to all the blood he had spilt, but even then, he felt, for a second, the bile rising to his throat.

He drew back the bloody, splintered stub that was the spear and threw it at another bandit. And all of this had happened in a split second, so the velocity of his mare crashed against the already weakening shield wall.

When the second volley of the great charge that was his heavy cavalry hit the wall, it had collapsed, with the spears of the bandit army doing nothing but to bounce against the heavily armoured horses, and with another jab of the spiked boot, the horse mercilessly reared.

Ulf's mare, in spirit of her herdmates, before his very eyes, simply kicked a man's face in.

Around him, his cavalry mercilessly slaughtered escaping men and women, trampled over bone, sinew, face, flesh, crotch...sometimes Ulf wondered if the horses, who were supposed to be innocent creations of the gods, were as bloodthirsty and cruel as the hounds of war that rode them.

Ulf drew the axe from the loop on his belt and swung hard.

A wet thump and a scream later, a bandit was being painfully dragged across the field, with an axe buried in her chest and her legs being cut and stabbed and mangled open by Nirn's merciless skin and the weapons and shields discarded by her own comrades.

Ulf used the velocity of his mare to throw her, and in his peripheral vision, he saw a girl, who could not be more than sixteen or seventeen, with a beautiful face and hair as fair as golden wheat, jump to stab him in the throat. Her blue eyes were widened with anger, and he could see that she was better armed than the bandits he was facing.

She was probably a mercenary, one of those types who were either blinded by their youthful idealism or their bravado and optimism. One of those who left loving parents in some village with promises to return after they had seen the world, maybe earned some riches.

She was a girl who could not have been more than seventeen; maybe she had never even known a man, or a woman for that matter. And now she never would.

Ulf hit her wrist with his shield, and because the momentum of his mare threw her completely off balance, then his arm rose on its own volition, and he buried the axe in her golden scalp.

She stayed attached to the axe, and was dragged across the field filled with dead. Ulf shook the corpse free.

She must have been a beautiful, sweet natured girl with a thirst of the unknown, she was young enough to be his daughter, and yet, yet he killed her.

A man before him was desperately trying to escape the spear that trapped his leg to the ground, but before he could, Ulf trampled him. The sickening crushing sounds accompanied by the screams of pure, unadulterated agony would haunt him for a while, that Ulf knew.

Then it ended.

And the clouds burst forth in rain, Ulf wondered if it was a torrent of teardrops in shame of the bloody act done below them.

Rain washes everything.

Blood, internal matter, dirt, grime...but can it wash away guilt?

Among the cheers of his men and women for a job well done, Ulf Bloody Beard wondered if he truly had become that name.

Because he knew, deep down, despite his every attempt to deny it, every attempt to escape it, he knew that he enjoyed it.

* * *

Morrowind

Sahxleel territory

4E 201

"Evil"

* * *

"...They came in boats, in the dark of the night. With Red Mountain belching smoke behind them, the dark scales stood in rows, gleaming swords raised in the wind. "Sahxleeli stay ragkhat grath'navhi [ _sic_ ]" they cried, their voices malicious, and the wind was rising like Red Mountain blew up once again, and a thousand whispers blotted out all sound and then they descended on us like the Daedra out of Oblivion. Those who could hide, climbed into the burial cavern and toilet-pits. I had to coat myself in shit and stay still. I half expected the thrice-damned lizards to cut open the covers stick a blade in me...

...They didn't rape and burn all we had; instead they whipped all of the poor s'wits who couldn't hide, they impaled the females on poles and stakes, and tore the males in half real slow. Then they sliced them open, roasted their guts on open fire and fed it to those who survived. Nearly all of those who hid killed themselves, and now, now I live here alone. If they come for me, let them come.

...The horrors...those scalebacks...they took my son, burned my village and now they are coming for me! The scalebacks are going to kill all of us. " – 'Voices', Great House Indoril, Print division, testimonies of [REDACTED], survivors of [REDACTED], Great House Dres territory, and one of the first villages to face the Argonian invasion of 4E 6.

"...The order of the Ordinator-Reclaimer would like to take this opportunity presented by the three to remind any and all Dunmer, regardless of Great House affiliation for the nine hundredth time this month that they are not to set foot on any soil outside seven hundred fathoms of Naamuruhn camp, particularly towards the forests to the south. If you intend to act like Nchows, other faithful cannot be expected to bring back your mangled remains." – Directive issued by the order of the Ordinator-Reclaimer, stationed in Mournhold. 4E 201

"...It's so dry here. I have been here for cycles, I have been deprived of the sap, yet I remember our marsh, An Xileel. How I wish to go back there, how I wish to meet my hatchlings. I remember them still, they were so small, with scales so weak, I would tickle their chins and they would open their mouths, and I would feed them the worms of Texbeshi. I imagine they have grown up to be as stout as the trunks of the roots, and to have the beauty of the greenest bark in the marsh. Our life here is horrible, when the Dres and Indoril are not whipping us to harvest their crop they are putting their pricks in us, or letting their bugs lay eggs in us. They even use other Softskins in this way. Some of them cry, and I try my best to console them, and a golden brown softskin female, with skin that glows like sunlight through the leaves of the hist, she cries the hardest. The bugs have taken a liking to her, and she has already begun to bloat. Some of them do not understand why I try to help them, but I do it since we are all the same, smoothskin or roughskin, we are all tangled by the roots of our fates. We are all Sahxleel. I know I shall never see home once again, but my only wish is that one day our people come here to stand on their soil, not as slaves, but as free Sahxleel and with their worthless mountain belching smoke for all to see, they cry, 'Sahxleeli ste raqkhat grat'nvi', 'The souls of the Sahxleel come at you greyskins!'" – Translated excerpt, 'Ste Sahxleeli', 4E 200 reprint, Imperial Library press. The Imperial Library notes that possession and usage of this book in Morrowind and other Dunmer colonies is considered treason and the press or the Library shall not be held accountable for any damages, loss of life or any bodily harm occurred due to the sale, procurement or usage of this book in any Dunmeri affiliated settlement not limited to Morrowind.

"...In Jel we have a phrase. It is 'Sahxhrah tux leel', in the Tamrielic tongue, if translated literally, it means 'Rootwarmth of the people'. A less literal translation would be 'The warmth in the hearts of people'. For a long time, Sahx has been interpreted as root, and Sahxleel as People of the root. Although some unfortunate among us claim that to hatch with scales in the marshes, An Xileel, is to be Sahxleel. No, anyone can be Sahxleel, for Sahx means heart as well. If your heart ties you to others, if you are... entangled in the branches of the heart-tree, then you are Sahxleel. As such, our people long misunderstood that in the world there exist people who think only for themselves, they are the ones who uproot Sahx, hearts, from the chests of the many. In your armies, your soldiers know not Sahxhrah tux leel, they think themselves expendable, and so fifteen thousand of them are happily sacrificed by your leaders to make a point. Sahxleel do not fight to sacrifice the many, they fight to protect the many. That is why every Sahxleel hides in shadows, on branches of the trees, under the water in marshes, to protect themselves, and to protect the many. The Grat'nvleel, who we once accepted with open arms and felt saddened when they tortured us, took away our freedom and destroyed us. We were in wait, so that the golden grey smoothskins would stop their onslaught, would not take away the mother from the hatchling, the Hist from the Sahxleel, so that perhaps the Sahx they uproot from our lifeless chests, they would put in their own. But all we did was wait. No more. Grat'nvleel think that we come in droves to take them as slaves, just as they once did with us. But no, we don't. We don't come in droves to take away lover from lover, mother from hatchling, not to use the grey softskins as toys for perverted pleasure, to pass from one scaleback to the other. No. We come because the set of the Sahx they mercilessly ripped from the leel, the set...the souls, howl for vengeance. There is one more meaning of Sahx. It means love and be prepared to seek vengeance for those you love. We come in droves for when we offered Sahx to them, they ripped it out. They whipped us, cruelly; they ripped one scale after the other to see if we were softskins like they were. We wish only to let them know what it feels to be utterly obliterated, torn branch to branch, limb to limb. For every Sahxleel they killed, we will kill five Grat'nvleel, for every five, we will kill fifty, and for every fifty we will kill fifty thousand, again and again and again one after the other till there are no more grat'nv left. So they come at us charging blindly, and we wait silently in the shadows to taste of the blood of their many. We fight for we have Sahx." – Xar-Ei, 'The Treatise of Warfare', Daggerfall Royal Press, 4E 197.

"...Do no Evil, whispers the Hist. For the actions of one Sahxleel the world judges the rest. Only through courtesy you make a friend..." – Literal, unrhymed translation of an Argonian poem for Children.

* * *

What is Evil?

What does it matter?

It never mattered for the black tide on the warpath, it did not matter when they waited in the forests, lay still, with their hearts reverberating with the heart of the great forest.

One of them stirred, black scales gleaming the light falling in through the leaves.

Xar-Ei was of average height for an Argonian, but for the slowly degenerating Dunmer he was monstrous at six feet seven inches.

But it was not for his height he was feared, but for his ability to remain calm and collected in every situation.

He moved. Dark leather armour exposed his black and red scales as they traced numerous scars.

Sliding through grass, unseen, a serpent poised to strike, white fangs gleamed as he hissed to his scouts.

They climbed over trees, under trees, slid like serpents, backflipped off branches and rolled.

A forked tongue licked at the black and red scales of his lips, yellow serpent eyes made out a group of Dunmer up ahead.

" _Grat'nvi raxiy."_

" _Txaar zserrte, vis Indoril r Grat'nvi."_ Xar-Ei stated

" _Kaoc' tem Grat'nvi."_

Serpentine laughter quickly started, and then subsided.

Through the golden stripes of the sun overhead, Xar-Ei's white pointed teeth flashed once, still half-concentrating on the fate reserved for the Indoril Greyskins who approached.

He growled, and his serpent like eyes narrowed even further. It was this feeling, this expressed emotion that was born of the repressed pain every Sahxleel knew, it was this bloodlust that had stared down the cleanleaders of the Dremora.

This blood rage was reserved for the Grat'nvi.

Surely today the Hist had convinced its tree friends to the west to be bountiful, for today, blood was what he was going to get.

And then he hissed once again.

The Argonians disappeared.

A wind moved around in the forest. It blew from farther south, and it flew through the great forest, perhaps attempting to warn the very scared and lost Indoril chap'thil.

They utilised the diamond formation, with the strongest as the rear guard, the fastest as the man in the front, the shieldmer at the sides and the archer at the centre.

It was the best tactic they could think of, after getting lost on a patrol after drinking too much Greef and waking up West of the forest, with no other way to get across but Argonian territory.

Perhaps the diamond formation would have worked if they out on the plains instead of in the forest. Perhaps they would be better off if they were facing normal Argonian guerrillas instead of Xar-Ei and his band of Sahxleeli shadowscales.

Their rearguard grumbled how quiet the forest was, and it was true, for the only sound they heard was the sudden chirping of birds and then all was quiet once again.

They moved silently on the thick layer of leaves on the forest floor, and so they heard nothing as the sharp blade hacked at the rearguard's bonemold.

With a muted thwack, the bonmold collar, the shirt underneath and the vertebrae under the skin were torn apart.

It was said that Argonian blades were curved inwards because they could cut through bonemold with little force. When the rounded, curved inward edge tore the armour, it did not have to get at the arteries inside. No. The bones the impact broke apart would kill the one on the receiving edge far slower and with far more agony than if they had been sundered with immense strength, something the blades had a capacity to do with ease, but the masters did not unless under extreme duress.

A single broken vertebra was easily dislodged from its place, and it soon found its way into her brain.

Two strong arms gripped her shoulders; two more gripped her legs.

When her brains leaked out through a gap in the back of her torn bonemold, and dropped to the ground with a wet crackle over the rustling bed of the forest, the archer turned, an arrow ready to kill anything in its way.

There was nothing there...

...But the wind.

The remaining went into alert, spaced up and became prepared for an ambush.

Nothing came but a whoosh.

And then the whole forest was silent. It was not an artificially made silence, but the silence of a predator playing with its prey.

Two hundred years ago, standing in the great forest, they would be the predators hunting escaped slaves to make examples out of them.

But the times had changed.

In this time, age and territory the Sahxleel were the predators and they were the prey.

Anybody else would have resigned their fate and prepared for the agonising death that would soon come. But not them.

They were Ordinator-Reclamators. A few thousand died reclaiming their city of light, and a few thousand more would die before they resigned their fates to scalebacked lizards instead of the Reclamations.

"Saint Nerevar, hear our call, give us the strength to fight for our homeland this day."

And then the silent forest broke apart in a thundering.

A monstrous, blood chilling thundering that sounded like five thousand birds and snakes crying for justice, as if calling out for the blood of the evil to be spilled. This was the sound that had rattled the gates of oblivion when they had opened on Argonia, and this was the scream of the all engulfing Black Tide when they wiped out the Dres.

 _We are coming,_ the scream whispered in their ears.

The Ordinators shook themselves from this bone chilling, pant shitting warcry of unimaginable, yet unmistakable expression of pure agony and rushed at it, firing arrows, throwing spears.

Utterly spent they jumped into the maelstrom...

...Of nothingness.

And then it was over for them. For utterly spent, out of weaponry or ammunition to fall back to and out of stamina, the Dunmer were no match for the six towering masses of black scales that rematerialised behind them.

" _Kaoc' tem Grat'nvi" ,_ the voices growled in unison, with their sharp white teeth on display with their blood splattered faces, and then there was nothing more, as six cruel blades with their edges curved inwards were raised to taste the blood of the Dunmer.

They fell.

The Sahxleel did not stop.

They hacked, ripped and tore.

A single, mangled grey hand rose, calling for Nerevar the saint, for the Triune. It pleaded desperately, for salvation.

None came.

The next step was to drag the mangled bodies, with intestine torn out and spread across the floor, to the edge of the forest, and to show the Grat'nvi that they respected the borders.

No doubt, some fools would once again enter the forest in the name of Nerevar the Vengeful, and then die crying for the pain to stop.

" _Xar-Ei! Zeshe Nerevar uxhal? Histij r Grat'nvi?"_

Xar-Ei stopped, the question was for him of course, and he had to answer. But how would we explain to them who Nerevar was?

He grunted. Greyskins were getting fatter and heavier, some of their supply lines needed to go.

He would tell them what Nerevar actually was, something more than Grat'nvi Histij, a god of the greyskins.

" _Xhu, Nerevar r Grat'nvi Histij, qe Nerevar r Sahxleel."_

Unbelieving, they laughed.

Serpentine laughter boomed unbridled across the forest, and the wind carried its essence to the northwest.

Somewhere in Mournhold, it pierced a mother's heart like a Sahxleeli arrow.

It then went onward, and onward, cutting through the Colovian's fur cap, and into the heartland, blowing away a maiden's skirt as it picked speed and headed north. It entered the land of the Nords through a narrow gap in an icy wall, across the burial mounds and further east, now heavy with cold. It passed through the ruins of what was once Winterhold, till it bent eastward and passed through the gaps of a closed window.

The gentle breeze was now heavy, forceful, so it showed its force, like the Sahxleel in the forest to the south. It turned over the inkwell on the table, destroyed the sheets of paper, and spilled ink on the fur and silk dress of an exquisitely crafted Breton beauty deep in thought. Perhaps her beauty was so powerful that it bewildered even the wayward wind, so it blundered?

Her brown eyes that were deep in reflection, trapped somewhere between applications Magical Theory and the alluring novel on her bedside now narrowed in annoyance as she let loose a series of very coarse insults in Breton and Cyrodiilic.

The wind did not stop, it went out through the bottom of her door and continued southwards, over a man dressed in heavy armour with a scarred face and braided red hair finishing a jug of mead seated on his horse, it blew through the fur of Khajiit leading their caravans across the rocky plain, singing songs of nostalgia, of their home and of sugar.

Further south it went, through a mill beside a river, with a hut partially blown apart and two shrivelled, burnt corpses, piled one over the other, their lips melded together in the final embrace.

The wind died on their lips, tasting of the remnants of blood that once lived there, and through a small gap that had escaped the fire that melted all, entered the heated and hollow teeth.

Vampires they had been.

Everyone the wind had touched before them had some concept of Evil. But not them, as they lived on Evil.

Yet the being that had destroyed their peaceful existence away from all of Civilisation, to them, was it not Evil as well?

What is Evil?

What does it matter?

.

.

.

.

.

* * *

"The Theory of Magicka"

* * *

"...When we speak of Magicka we make two mistakes. The first that Magicka is a divine gift to be utilised only when required by the Divines, and the second that all Magicka has flown in through the hole left by Magnus when he escaped during Lorkhan's betrayal of the selfish Aedra and subsequent creation of the world.

The fact that Magicka is a force which can harnessed by emotions and one's Magicka pool can significantly be increased by meditation, experience etcetera is an indication that it is not in fact a Divine gift, but rather due to a set of physical laws formulated during the creation of the world. Magicka flows through all of creation's veins. While some show high Magickal affinity, some don't, but each and every person born on Nirn has the capacity to create a disturbance in the Magickal flow.

Secondly the entirety of Magicka is not, contrary to popular belief, force which has flown in from a hole in time and space which leads to Aetherius. Since Nirn, or Mundus, was created by Aedra, in the image of Aetherius. The Towers, the ancient mystical constructions that hold the world up, to keep it from dissolving back into nothingness are the focal points of connection between the stable flow of Magicka from Aetherius and Nirn.

Once this treatise is printed, everyone in Tamriel shall consider me to be insane, but I have one final proof. Any mage, who is well versed in Magickal Theory can take a soulgem, and a pin, then create a hanging construct, for example, near Direnni Tower on the Isle of Balifera, to judge a disturbance in Magickal flow. They shall find none, instead, a steady, rhythmic flow of Magickal stream.

However, near an unfortunately deactivated or destroyed Tower, like Crystal-Like-Law on Summerset, the same construct shall indicate an extremely powerful and unstable flow of Magicka.

A Tower is thus, a focal point in the steady flow of Magicka. If there exists a gateway to Aetherius through the sun-shaped hole left by Magnus, then surely it exists behind a giant ball of swirling ignited gasses." – Ana de Rais, 'On the nature of Magicka', Daggerfall Gazette biannual edition 4E 199

"It is wonderful to see a sixteen year old take such interest in Magicka and its characteristics, but perhaps she should go back to being High Rock's most renowned beauty and leave the theorising and bookwriting to the various qualified mages across the world." – Elayne Jastal, court mage of Daggerfall, in an editorial criticising Ana de Rais, Daggerfall Gazette, Midyear 15th 4E 199

"...She is young, inexperienced and challenges theories put together by researchers far more talented than her, and even challenges the sentiments of the faithful. Her callous reference to Alinor as Summerset shows how deplorably unfeeling she is toward Altmer sentiments. This is the kind of child that gets involved in Daedra worship and sedition, and insubordination of the social order and terrorism, the product of liberalism and leniency of discipline. Were she an Altmer child in Alinor, she would have been bent over her parents' knee and given a spanking worth remembering..." – Isiarnil, High Priest of the Order of Auri-El, Ritemaster of Chantry of the Eight, Alinor, on a trip to bless the extension of the Chantry of Eight in Daggerfall, replying to request for a comment on Ana de Rais, Daggerfall Gazette Midyear 18th 4E 199

"She is young, and inexperienced. But what has to be understood is that she has put together a theory and provided proof, although in a manner too informal and unconventional, at the age of sixteen that not many can do even over the course of a few hundred years of lifespan. A girl of such acute mind cannot be neglected and left alone in an atmosphere that tries to curb her abilities. As such, I extend this informal invitation to her to come study at the College of Winterhold next year, when she is formally of age. I shall personally be privileged to bear the cost of her travel and the expenditure on her studies, both now and in the future, if it shall be ever needed. – Mirabelle Ervine, Master Wizard, College of Winterhold, Dagerfall Gazette, Midyear 20th 4E 199

* * *

 **I have another one incoming in a month or so. Edited it to remove some of the violence because anyone who has read what I could write a few months ago in moody mode (vastly inferior) will tell you that the gore was there in full glory.**

 **Now, time for acknowledgements.**

 **Alright, grab the usual suspects, you know who they are.**

 **No?**

 **Well.**

 **Thanks to JM38LACK, Vanillathunder215, Leitis and countess z for helping me put this one out.**

 **My brother Vikingbardofragnarok, who is as Viking as I am world famous, did not contribute anything. You hear that you idiot! Go back to your room or I will change the WIFI password and forget it. Or throw it into the water harvesting tank.**

 **Anyway, please review. Honestly, I get starved for reviews. Think it is good, bad, that omg you are the best author in the world or that blech, this piece of exposition is vomit inducing, or that if you feel I should probably jump off a building somewhere because I sympathise with ruthless murderers and 'terrorists' and Argonians and Argonian terrorists (Long live the Dunmer nation. Morrowind FTW. Nope. Xar-Ei says hello and would like to remind all you Dunmer lovers that he has got this hatchling seated on his knee playing with a Dunmer skull) and how all of my characters are amoral bastards, please review.**


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